Body Surfing

his bottle at Larry Bishop’s nearly naked body. “You got cash hidden on you, I’m not so sure I wanna touch it.” The old man stood up. Wavered for a moment, the applejack swishing around its bottle like an agitated genie, then caught his balance. “Hold on a minute.”
    Jasper had no intention of going anywhere. A third TV dinner was whirling around the microwave even now. His dad’s footsteps thumped slowly up the stairs. Jasper didn’t really pay attention until he heard him turn right at the upper landing. Besides the bathroom, there were only two rooms upstairs: his dad’s bedroom on the left and, on the right, the one that had belonged to him.
    There was a bundle of clothing in his hands when John Van Arsdale reentered the kitchen. Faded Levi’s, a purplish plaid yoke-back shirt that Jasper had bought at the thrift store for a barn dance. Oneblack sock, one Navy blue. A pair of scuffed dress shoes peeked from within the roll. Jasper would’ve preferred his tennis shoes, but—but he’d been wearing them when he died.
    “You look like you’re about his size.”
    It was a moment before Jasper could speak. “Shorter,” he said. “I’m—that is, your son was shorter than me. Almost three inches.”
    John Van Arsdale looked at the wad of clothing in his arms, looked back up at the stranger in his room. Finally he shrugged.
    “Devils can’t be choosers. Put these on. I’m tired of having a man in stained panties in my kitchen.”
    Jasper blushed and took the bundle. There had been any number of occasions when elder and younger Van Arsdale had sat at the table in their underwear, both too hungover to get dressed (although neither of them owned underwear like this ). Jasper pushed his chair away from the TV tray and began to pull the pants on.
    John Van Arsdale watched the stranger don his son’s clothes. Jasper’s pants were indeed a few inches too short for Larry Bishop’s legs, and the old man made a vague sort of gesture at the frayed cuffs. “So. Were you a friend of his?”
    Jasper stared fixedly at the pants as he pulled the zipper up, as if it was an alien technology.
    “Not really. I knew—I know Michaela.”
    “Sweet girl, Mickie! How is she?”
    Jasper grimaced, slipped his arms into the shirt. Michaela hated it when people called her Mickie.
    “I was just about to go by the hospital to check on her.”
    “Why? She back in?”
    One of the shirt’s pearl snaps sounded loud as a firecracker in the quiet kitchen.
    “Back—?”
    “Didn’t you hear? She got out yesterday. Doctors say it was a miracle she even woke up, let alone walked out under her own steam. I don’t believe in miracles myself. Not anymore. But that’s what the doctors say it was.”
    When the microwave dinged behind him, Jasper nearly broke another chair. It took all his self-control to keep Larry’s eyes from popping out of his head.
    “Look. You’ve been really nice and all, but I’ve gotta go.”
    He stood up, but John Van Arsdale reached out and grabbed his wrist with an iron claw. “He had no face.”
    Jasper could have tossed his dad off like a child. But he held still, powerless in the face of the old man’s grief.
    “My boy had no face. The crash ripped his face right off.”
    Jasper’s arm shook in his father’s grip. He tried to make it stop but couldn’t.
    “He was seventeen years old.” John Van Arsdale’s eyes bored into Jasper’s. No, not into Jasper’s. Into Larry Bishop’s. “Seventeen. He hadn’t even started his life. Hadn’t started living. He…”
    The old man stared into Larry Bishop’s eyes. Larry Bishop’s eyes, Jasper told himself. His dad was looking into Larry Bishop’s eyes. Not his. Larry’s.
    Larry’s .
    The old man shook his head. A whispered croak slipped from his mouth.
    “I don’t believe in miracles.”
    Jasper opened Larry’s mouth to protest, then closed it. He had almost said, “Dad,” but stopped himself in time. But he didn’t know what else to say.
    The old man shook his head again. “I don’t know who you are, but you need to get out of my house right now.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you—”
    “Out!” the old man screamed. And then: “I do not believe! I do not believe!”
    The old man lifted the bottle to throw it. For the first time ever, Jasper saw his dad spill alcohol. It splattered from the bottle all over the old man’s shirt. The tart odor of applejack filled Jasper’s hyperacute nostrils, but to him